Mike Johnson is Very Religious
His critics are focused on the wrong problem.
Because Mike Johnson was a virtual unknown to most of us, seemingly coming out of nowhere to win the unanimous support of an otherwise divided Republican caucus to get elected Speaker, there is a spate of reporting scrambling to figure out who he is. I find most of it frankly exasperating, conflating views that are simply odd from the perspective of most of the professional class with public policy ideas that are actually dangerous.
HuffPost‘s senior politics reporter Jennifer Bendery (“Mike Johnson’s Wife Runs Counseling Service That Compares Being Gay To Bestiality, Incest“) is an exemplar of the type:
The wife of newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) runs a counseling business that advocates the belief that homosexuality is comparable to bestiality and incest, according to its operating documents.
Johnson and his wife, Kelly, have long intertwined their political and business lives: They became a known entity in the late 1990s when they went on national television as the face of Louisiana’s new marriage covenant law, which makes it harder to get a divorce. Today, they co-host a podcast, “Truth Be Told,” where they talk about political and social issues from a conservative Christian perspective. Their podcast is up to 69 episodes.
“We have been working in ministry side by side and together for our whole marriage,” Johnson said last year when he and his wife launched their podcast, in an interview with The Message, a website that connects members of the Louisiana Southern Baptist community.
The House speaker’s identity as an evangelical Christian has been a driving force in hisin his personal life and his career, which includes eight years as the senior attorney and national spokesperson for a legal nonprofit affiliated with the religious right.
“Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it ― that’s my worldview,” Johnson told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in a Thursday night interview. “That’s what I believe, and so I make no apologies for it.”
Kelly Johnson features the couple’s podcast on the website of her company, Onward Christian Counseling Services, which promotes Bible-based pastoral counseling. Her website also includes a link to its 2017 operating agreement, which lays out the corporate bylaws for the company ― and embraces a number of socially conservative beliefs about LGBTQ+ people and women’s reproductive rights.
The agreement states that Onward Christian Counseling Services is grounded in the belief that sex is offensive to God if it is not between a man and a woman married to each other. It puts being gay, bisexual or transgender in the same category as someone who has sex with animals or family members, calling all of these examples of “sexual immorality.”
“We believe and the Bible teaches that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography or any attempt to change one’s sex, or disagreement with one’s biological sex, is sinful and offensive to God,” says the eight-page business document.
This agreement also refers to “pre-born babies” and says the company is committed to defending and protecting all human life, “from conception through natural death.”
Longtime political reporter and commentator Brian Beutler, now blogging on Substack, wants us to “Make Mike Johnson Famous.”
I had hoped, without really expecting, that the 20-plus member GOP rebellion against Jim Jordan’s efforts to shove himself down their throats would bloom into a greater struggle against MAGA Donald Trump’s abusive lieutenants in the House.
A week later they decided they’d had quite enough integrity, thanks, and settled for Mike Johnson, who’s like Jim Jordan without the manic caterwauling.
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And I think it reflects a general sense within the Republican Party that its members can plow past most of their political liabilities with a brief burst of shamelessness and then quickly waft the stench away. They reasoned that by picking a relatively unknown quantity, one who seems studious and kind instead of smarmy and dim (Kevin McCarthy) or abrasive and menacing (Jim Jordan), they could put weeks of turmoil behind them with one quick show of unity, and then let beat sweeteners take care of the rest.
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Republicans have gambled that they can apply the same method Bill Barr used to bury the Mueller report to Mike Johnson’s record of extremism and insurrection—create a first impression of innocence in the public mind that Democrats can’t easily unmake.
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Instilling an idea about a person in the social consciousness and making it stick is an unending and tedious process. Republicans didn’t define Al Gore as a wooden teller of Big Fish tales in one day, it required relentless scoffing; same with John Kerry as the out-of-touch cheese-eating surrender monkey, Hillary Clinton as Mrs. Emails. Nancy Pelosi as Mrs. San Francisco values, and so on.
House Republicans, with a helpful assist from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), teed things up nicely for Democrats by boo-hissing and screaming at a journalist to “shut up” for asking Johnson whether he stands by his involvement in the coup, while he stood by meekly. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) shouted booyah (“damn right!” technically) on the House floor in full support of Johnson’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But memories of those episodes will fade, advertisements that exploit the footage, while useful, will lose shock value. (Don’t most people thumb through their phones during commercial breaks these days anyhow?)
What won’t fade as easily is an indelible caricature. Like Gore the exaggerator again, or Jimmy Carter as the prophet of malaise. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) became a meme when the January 6 Committee released footage of him (daintily, fearfully) fleeing the insurrection he helped inspire. Well here’s Mike Johnson, MAGA Ayatollah, running away from questions about his involvement in the failed coup and support for a national abortion ban.
When Johnson is absent or unavailable for any reason, it must be because he’s hiding from yet more questions about his election lies. Or maybe he’s trying to arrest a gay couple, or a woman who terminated a pregnancy. With him it’s always one or the other.
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House Republicans won’t pay much of a price for electing Johnson unless Johnson is understood, at a population level, to be a malign actor, where when you say the name “Mike Johnson,” it conjures a predictable image in the mind of whomever you’re talking to.
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Republicans just lined up unanimously to hand the House over to an election denier. They did this because Donald Trump insisted on it. If they suffer politically as a result, it won’t be because of the IRA. It’ll be because people come to see Johnson no differently than they saw Kari Lake and the other defeated insurrections of the 2022 midterms. And it’s critically important that they do. If Republicans don’t lose next November, an insurrectionist will be running the House on January 6, 2025.
NYT congressional reporter Luke Broadwater (“9 Takeaways From Mike Johnson’s First Interview as Speaker“) simply reports, putting things into reasonable context:
Speaker Mike Johnson said on Thursday evening that his personal worldview and policy positions are dictated by the Bible, in his first extended interview since assuming the job second in line to the presidency.
During a 41-minute interview with the Fox News host Sean Hannity, Mr. Johnson, a 51-year-old Louisiana Republican, acknowledged that some of his conservative Christian views, such as his opposition to same-sex marriage, run counter to the law. He said he would not try to impose that view or others, such as his opposition to abortion, on the whole country. He also laid out how he planned to approach other major issues that would soon come before Congress.
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Here are nine takeaways from the interview.
1. Johnson’s views stem from the Bible.
“I am a Bible-believing Christian,” he told Mr. Hannity. “Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It’s curious, people are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it.’ That’s my worldview.”
Mr. Johnson added that his religious views didn’t necessarily mean that he would be successful in pushing a conservative Christian agenda through Congress.
“Everybody comes to the House of Representatives with deep personal convictions, but all of our personal convictions are not going to become law,” he said.
2. He acknowledged that same-sex marriage is the law of the land.
Mr. Johnson has for years argued that same-sex marriage should be illegal and has called homosexuality “inherently unnatural” and “dangerous.” But he told Mr. Hannity he had no plans to try to criminalize same-sex marriage now that he’s speaker.
“On the marriage issue, no one has discussed that for as long as I can remember,” Mr. Johnson said. “This has been settled by the Supreme Court.”
He said that he disagreed with the Supreme Court, but that he would not fight to change the law.
“They changed the definition of marriage that had been regarded by basically every human society for 5,000 years, but when five justices on the Supreme Court changed it, that became the law of the land,” Mr. Johnson said. “I’m a constitutional law attorney. I respect that, and we move forward.”
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In fact, Mr. Johnson tried just last year to prevent the enactment of legislation to codify same-sex marriage protections at the federal level. He was one of 169 House Republicans who voted against that bill, but it cleared Congress with broad bipartisan support and became law.
3. Johnson said abortion rights should be decided by the states.
Mr. Johnson is staunchly opposed to abortion and has supported a nationwide ban on the procedure after 20 weeks of pregnancy. But he said in the interview that he would not push for enactment of a federal prohibition, and that the matter should instead be left up to the states.
“We argued my entire career for 25 years that the states should have the right to do this,” he said. “There’s no national consensus among the people on what to do with that issue on a federal level for certain.”
4. He wants a vote on Ukraine aid separated from a vote on aid to Israel.
Mr. Johnson, who has opposed sending more aid to Ukraine as the country tries to fight off a Russian invasion, said he would insist on splitting that money off from aid to Israel for its war against Hamas. President Biden has requested one large $105 billion emergency aid package for both, including money for Taiwan and border security in the United States.
“I told the staff at the White House today that our consensus among House Republicans is that we need to bifurcate those issues,” Mr. Johnson said of Ukraine and Israel. He added, however, that he believed that Russia must be stopped.
“We can’t allow Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine because I don’t believe it would stop there. And it would probably encourage and empower China to perhaps make a move on Taiwan,” he said, adding, “We’re not going to abandon them, but we have a responsibility of stewardship — responsibility over the precious treasure of the American people.”
He also described himself as a “skeptic” about providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians, as Mr. Biden has requested, arguing it could end up in the hands of terrorists.
“You do not want to further empower the terrorist groups. Our heart goes out to innocent Palestinian people, of course, as we do to anyone who’s in a terrible situation like that,” he said. “We have to be very discerning in our policy and in our approach to this.”
5. Johnson endorsed changing House rules to make it harder to remove a speaker.
During the interview, Mr. Hannity railed against the House rule that allows any one lawmaker to force a snap vote to remove the speaker, which hard-right Republicans used to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He suggested that the threshold for removing a speaker should be raised.
“I think we’re going to change it,” Mr. Johnson said.
6. Johnson does not want to kick out Santos.
Mr. Johnson said that he would not move to expel Representative George Santos of New York, who has been indicted on fraud charges, despite an effort by several House Republicans to do so. He noted the slim majority his party has in the chamber.
“We have a four-seat majority in the House,” he said. “It is possible that that number may be reduced even more in the coming weeks and months, and so we’ll have what may be the most razor-thin majority in the history of the Congress. We have no margin for error.”
He said Mr. Santos should get due process and the ability to fight the charges.
“He’s not convicted. He’s charged,” Mr. Johnson said. “And so if we’re going to expel people from Congress, just because they’re charged with a crime or accused, that’s a problem.”
But the matter is not up to him. House rules allow any member to call for the expulsion of another member, which a group of New York Republicans have done, and force a quick vote that takes a two-thirds majority to prevail.
7. Johnson said there would be no legislation on guns.
After the mass shooting in Maine, Mr. Johnson said it was “not the time” to talk about more gun restrictions.
“The problem is the human heart. It’s not guns, it’s not the weapons,” he said. “At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves, and that’s the Second Amendment, and that’s why our party stands so strongly for that.”
8. He played down the importance of race while discussing the difficulties of his Black son.
Some conservatives have criticized Mr. Johnson for comments he made in a 2020 interview in which he spoke about racial disparities in America and called for “systemic change.” In it, Mr. Johnson spoke about raising a Black son in addition to his biological children, saying his Black son had a more difficult path than his white son “simply because of the color of his skin.”
When Mr. Hannity asked about the issue on Thursday, Mr. Johnson maintained that his two sons had disparate experiences, but suggested that his Black son’s troubles were not only about race but also about his family background and circumstances.
“Having raised two 14-year-old boys in America and the state of Louisiana, they had different experiences,” he said. “And I’m not so sure it was all about skin color, but it is about culture and society. Michael, our first, came from a really troubled background and had a lot of challenges.”
9. He attacked President Biden as mentally weak and potentially corrupt, but he didn’t endorse impeachment.
During the interview, Mr. Johnson said he couldn’t think of a single thing that Mr. Biden had done well in office, suggested that the president’s mental faculties had left him and raised the accusation, without any proof, that Mr. Biden had taken foreign bribes.
Still, Mr. Johnson said he was not at the point where he could endorse an impeachment of Mr. Biden.
“I know people are getting anxious and they’re getting restless and they just want somebody to be impeached, but we don’t do that like the other team,” Mr. Johnson said. “We have to base it upon the evidence, and the evidence is coming together. We’ll see where it leads.”
Look, I wish fewer of our politicians used a literal interpretation of a centuries-old religious text as the basis for their life decisions. And I certainly get why folks would be upset by his views on LGBTQ issues and abortion. But, frankly, they’re not all that unusual.
More importantly, it’s hard to imagine the voter who would otherwise vote Republican next November who is going to be dissuaded that their Speaker is too damned religious. If anything, constantly harping on these beliefs will likely bolster their turnout with “values voters” and reinforce the notion that Democrats are the anti-God party. It has every potential to be this cycles version of “They get titter, they cling to guns or religion . . .” or “basket of deplorables.”
Beyond that, to the extent that this are just nutty beliefs that have no real chance of getting enacted into law (Democrats control the Senate and White House after all) and, indeed, Johnson fully admits are settled issues, focusing on them is a distraction from the real issue: he’s an election-denying, insurrection-supporting, Mega-MAGA Trump supporter.
Johnson isn’t dangerous because he’s a Jesus freak with nutty ideas. Tens of millions of Americans hold similar beliefs. While I keep seeing the notion that he’s “Jim Jordan in a jacket” or otherwise just like the Crazy Eight who dethroned McCarthy, he’s actually got an agenda. He’s dangerous precisely because he’s a True Believer willing to ignore the will of the voters and the rule of law to keep power in service of these ideas.
This is the drum that Democrats and others who are afraid of a second Trump term need to bang for the next year and a week.
“indeed, Johnson fully admits [LTGBQ issues] are settled issues”
How many Republicans said the same thing about abortion in the last couple of decades? Including multiple nominees for the Supreme Court?
James, you may be uncomfortable discussing someone’s religion (as am I), but when the guy literally responds to questions about his world view by telling a reporter to read the Bible, HE has made it front and center, not “the media”.
Harry Truman won re-election largely by constantly attacking the “Do-Nothing 80th Congress.” Maybe 2024 is a good time for a “Give ‘Em Hell Joe” campaign; one difference would be to point out that they do nothing for most Americans, but are ready to do lots for their campaign contributors.
@Moosebreath: Supreme Court Justices don’t need to get bills through a Democratic Senate or signed by a Democratic President, they simply need another four Justices to go along.
@MarkedMan: My point isn’t that it’s off limits but that it’s counterproductive.
Interesting that he is sensitive to the consensus of the “people”.
Does he really mean “the people” or does he mean legislators. Current plebiscite (the people) voting on abortion seems to signal that the legislators are not actually representative of “the people”. Ohio will vote on restraining legislators on abortion issues in the next two weeks, and it seems that the polling favors the pro-choice approach.
One wonders if Johnson deference to the consensus of “the people” extends to gun control. The people’s consensus on assault styled weapons, magazine size, red flag laws, and universal background checks would clearly indicate what legislators should enact.
Deference to “the people’s consensus” ought to be applied uniformly.
Oh trust me, queer people fully aware they’re not all that unusual.
And as one of the people the Bible says is an abomination that should be executed, I can’t afford your casual indifference to the growing political power of religious extremists
Well, sure, because there’d be nobody left.
Hard disagree. The way Dobbs has played politically says the reverse.
The faction that sees Christian Nationalist/Seven Mountains Mandate type religiosity as positive, as desirable already know who this guy is, already know where the GOP is coming from, and they are reliable voters who turn out for primaries – they are a big part of the GOP base and enormously influential in GOP politics.
This type of religiosity does not play well with, for example, young voters – a demographic that notoriously needs a lot of prodding to turn out.
The things you object to like “election denialism” correlate strongly with religion – look at super Christians like Jenna Ellis as examples.
In any case, porque no los dos? – drawing attention to the Dominionism does not preclude talking about any other issue also.
So, he’s a religious and extreme version of Mitch McConnell, willing to do anything or trash anything for power.
I can’t remember where in the Bible it says that morality should go out the window when the retention of political power is at stake. Maybe Johnson could helpfully point us to that passage.
The concept of covenant marriage is actually a bit strange. I have been married to the same person for over fifty years. In my cohort of friends this is actually common, and we are all quite secular. Do we deserve some gold star or special appellation? Running a four minute mile makes you special. Running a six (when I was younger) didn’t make me special. Long marriages are not rare. Politicians proclaiming marital fidelity are common. Why is Mr. Johnson’s marriage praiseworthy?
BTW, a claim that his views are based on the bible is clearly a self serving evasion. The Bible is complex and can be interpreted in many ways; this has always been the case.
I have to disagree with you James.
In general I could not give a rat’s ass what anybody else believes, their religion is not my burden to carry. But too many of these Christianists feel it is their Godly duty to force others to live by their religious edicts. And that is exactly what Johnson wants to do.
@James Joyner:
You may very well be right.
Separately, I find the whole, “this candidate has bizarre and offensive world views which would be immediately disqualifying but, well, Religion!”, to be extremely frustrating. Amy Coney Barrett has extremist reactionary views that are so far outside the mainstream as to seem to come from medieval times, but she was never asked about them during her confirmation hearing because, “god!”. And now she’s one of nine votes overturning rights based on those very beliefs. Absolute rubbish.
@OzarkHillbilly:
True, and they are as cruel, unreasonable, and relentless as the Terminator in pursuit of that goal because Gawd gives them dispensation to do their worst.
@Kingdaddy:
It’s not what’s in the Bible but in how you read it.
For instance, the first commandment begins “I am the Lord thy God.” So when people like Johnson read it they think, “Oh, I am God. How nice!”
Yes, and those people vote MAGA which means that in fact those beliefs are quite dangerous. If you’re simple-minded enough to be an evangelical Christian in 2023 you’re too dumb to differentiate truth from bullshit, you’ve been raised on bullshit, you’ve committed yourself to bullshit. You are a member of Bullshit Nation, led by the Bullshit-bender, and I don’t mean Jesus. Evangelicals DGAF about Jesus, they’ve got Trump, so no more of that soft-hearted sermon on the mount nonsense, Trump hurts the people evangelical Christians want to hurt. And there are so many people they want to hurt.
If it was just their life decisions I’d agree with you, but it isn’t. They want to force their view of morality on the rest of us. And, as I mentioned yesterday https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/friday-tabs/#comment-2836717 Johnson has no real experience of the constraints of democracy. He’s run unopposed or in a hugely R gerrymandered district his whole political career. He said we’re not a democracy, but a Biblical republic, and he voted to challenge the 2020 election.
It’s good that he says he won’t fight to change the law on same-sex marriage, would leave abortion to the states, and will support aid to Ukraine. But you have to recognize one basic fact, people like Johnson LIE LIKE RUGS, 9th Commandment or no.
It’s been a pet peeve of mine, expressed in these threads, that the supposedly liberal MSM ignores candidates’ religion. If someone’s a standard issue Methodist, Catholic, or Baptist, who cares. But these Dominionists, Catholic Integralists, or whatever they don’t call these movements they pretend don’t exist, base their political decisions on their beliefs, which makes them our business. Fundamentalist religion is in decline, as is conservatism generally, but they’re fighting a rabid rear guard action. If they get into power they can do a hell of lot of damage, including, Orban like, digging themselves into power. And in the meantime they can block progress, including taxes on the wealthy and action on AGW.
This is the point. Mike Johnson wants to ignore the will of the voters because he is a Jesus freak with nutty ideas that are very unpopular in a democracy. This is an And/Both situation, not an Either/Or.
@James Joyner:
“Supreme Court Justices don’t need to get bills through a Democratic Senate or signed by a Democratic President, they simply need another four Justices to go along.”
That does not seem responsive to my comment. Like, at all.
Do you think that if Johnson could collect enough votes in Congress to pass a law criminalizing homosexual relations, and a President willing to sign it into law, he would hesitate for a second in passing it because it is a “settled issue”? If so, I have a bridge to sell you.
LOL, James, if you believe those bolded points, I’ll bet you believed that all those conservatives on the Supreme Court would never vote to overturn Roe!
Starting with saying that all you have to do to understand Johnson’s thoughts is read the Bible is the tell. All you have to do is read the Bible the way Johnson does, which comes from a deep well of bigotry and ignorance. Then, not surprisingly, all that bigotry and ignorance shows up in what Johnson thinks the Bible says.
Does he eat pork? Wear clothes of mixed fibers? and on and on through Leviticus. Does he turn the other cheek? Accept sinners (any kind, not just the ones he conveniently defines) as his brothers and sisters? And on and on through the Gospels.
No, of course not. The Jewish laws are as inconvenient as Jesus’s admonitions to love your neighbor.
A thousands of years old document, written poetically, can always be made to mean what you want it to, and that is what Johnson will do.
You know, “covenant marriage” lands on me in much the same way that “gold star lesbian” does.
If you want to understand Johnson, just pick up a Bible and read about Pharisees.
Johnson is not a Jesus freak – he’s a Republican who’s learned that invoking the bible as often as possible is what gives the religious nutters the warm fuzzies. What does that even mean – read the bible to learn my world view? Which part? What about the parts that contradict each other? What about the part where Jesus tells the wealthy young man to give away all he has if he wants to follow Jesus? If Johnson is for that, what does he think of the organized scam that is the Prosperity Gospel? What about turn the other cheek? What about the Sermon on the Mount – half of which the current GOP would regard as communism?
And then there’s this: “The problem is the human heart. It’s not guns, it’s not the weapons,” Okay, great, so let’s not ban guns, let’s have legislation that will allow the authorities to determine the quality of gun purchasers’ hearts and determine whether they’re likely to run amok or not. Hey, don’t look at me – Mike is the one who’s suggesting the root of the problem here.
Usually the piles-on here are overstated, but maybe not this time. This is probably the first time I don’t agree with any of the OP.
We can walk and chew gum simultaneously.
If Mike Johnson were named Muhammed Johnson, said his worldview was the Quran, and spouted antisemitic bile, I doubt about anyone would dismiss it with, ‘His hatred of Jews is not usual. Millions hold these views. It’s counterproductive to talk about it. He isn’t dangerous because he’s an Islamic extremist who wants to impose Sharia law on America.’
This post can only exist for the same reasons the people who violently sacked congress on Jan 6, 2021 are still not being called what they were: terrorists.
It’s salient to highlight the danger of a radical evangelical extremist like Mike Johnson being third in line to the presidency. Pointing out the anti-majoration personal beliefs of far right politicians who hate queer people is necessary, as well as good politics.
Johnson’s publicly stated desire to impose his outdated, unpopular, extremist religious interpretation is very dangerous. Saying so is not likely to alienate any persuadable voter.
@Kingdaddy: It’s gotta be in Habakkuk.
@Moosebreath:
No. But he can’t, so he won’t.
@Scott F.:
Oh, I very much agree. I’m just saying that the smart strategy is to emphasize the democracy and the policy rather than the religion. His dogmas are irrelevant. What he tries to impose on others are very much something that should be emphasized.
@James Joyner:
And it’s important for voters to know he would if he could. Just like Americans should be aware of they had a Speaker who would legalize rape or murder if they could.
The repulsiveness — or conversely, the agreeableness — a politician’s personal views, desires, and goals matter, whether or not they are actionable.
@James Joyner:
“But he can’t, so he won’t.”
The same was said on abortion for decades before Dobbs.
@Slugger: In fact, needing enforcement mechanisms like a “covenant marriage” makes the fidelity of the partners less praiseworthy. Someone’s moral core is pretty small and fragile, if you need such constraints to keep faithful for your partner. The same is true of prayer in schools (isn’t your personal relationship with God strong enough to sustain through your day, and your life, without having to constantly bleat it aloud?), the dire threat of green M&Ms (is your sexual foundation that weak, that a cartoon character can shatter it?) and oh so many tenets of the Kulturkampf right.
@Kingdaddy: Aside from whatever weird religiosity is behind it, I gather it’s partly motivated by the idea that no-fault divorce has made it too easy to give up rather than work to save marriages.
From Brad DeLong’s substack,
Like I said above – they lie.
@Kingdaddy:
I’ve said for years you can’t trust anybody who won’t behave decently without the threat of eternal damnation.
@James Joyner: How hard are you willing to work to avoid saying he’s a RW Christofascist nut job?
@James Joyner: On the other hand, no fault divorce has helped people escape abusive and exploitative marriages. Blocking the exits seems more than a little cruel, even the opposite of Christ-inspired compassion.
Pretending that the ideology of Christian extremists is irrelevant is frankly insane. Of course their beliefs matter, of course this asshole’s religious beliefs matter, and of course the media should be reporting on it. We show way, way too much deference to religion, and in particular the racism, misogyny, bigotry and hatred within religion. If all three major monotheisms disappeared tomorrow the world would be a better place.
There is no god. There just isn’t. This is all delusion, fantasy, rank superstition that should have no place in the modern world. Just because a lot of people believe in astrology that does not mean sane people should have to pretend to respect them. They have a right to believe, and the rest of us have a right to tell them they’re wrong, to do it as rudely as we like, and to treat delusional people as nuts.
@Kingdaddy: Well, normally, I might ask if you would want to be fired from your job (in this case, expelled from Congress) based on an accusation that you have not been tried and convicted of yet. Alas, I don’t care at all about Speaker Johnson, so I won’t bother.
@James Joyner: And given that ~1% of married couples avail themselves of the features of the statute and that are a feature of the laws in 3 states–an relatively low population states at that– covenant marriage could easily be dismissed as a fringe idea. (There are probably fewer covenant marriages in the US than there are transexuals.) But we would lose a really buzzy slippery slope argument by dismissing it as fringe.
(And who knows what devious spirit-world influences evangelicals have at their disposal to work their nefarious schemes? Once they eliminate throw away marriages what will they take next?)
https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2023/10/speaker-of-house-mike-johnson-hates.html
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@gVOR10:
The so-called Main Stream Media has clearly been affected by 4-5 decades of being accused by the Right of bias, to point where we are now. A place where, because the MSM is intimidated by the rightwing acid bath and wash, we get a lot of equivocating, ‘both sides -ism’ and/or a failure to conduct due diligence.
@James Joyner: I remember the times before no-fault divorce. I also remember the miserable people forced to live with someone they hated.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I always thought it should be harder to get married and easier to get divorced.
And I wouldn’t trust a single one of them in a position with meaningful power.
William Buckley famously said that he would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Boston phone directory than the faculty of Harvard. I have thought that a really good book would result from interviewing those 2000 people and selectively presenting their beliefs. I think that most people, presented with the actual salt of the earth, would go with the eggheads in the end.
@OzarkHillbilly: I have been listening to a lot of old radio dramas for a bit and the murder plot lines because a party won’t grant a divorce are almost to a level of being a trope. Especially on, “The Whistler”.
“By their deeds you will know them.”
Support for Ukraine, killing the stupid rule which gave de facto veto power to Gaetz and brought down McCarthy, acknowledgement that abortion should not be banned nationally.
A bible thumper with a pragmatic streak. I suppose that’s about the best that could be rationably hoped for in the midst of the MAGA craze we are living through. Better than the bulldoggery and mindless contrarianism of Gym Jordan and Trump, anyway.
Evangelicals, eh.
Whatcha gonna do?
Meanwhile, in the UK, the Anglican Church is not only established, but has its bishops seated in the House of Lords.
And few people, like little old agnostic me, are all that bothered because (and this is the important bit) most Anglican clerics aren’t gibbering loons.
To repeat the comment of an Anglican cleric I know on American dispensationalists /dominionists: “they are both heretics and lunatics”.
The evangelical and Catholic “reconstruction” types might take a moment to look at what happens, or is happening, in European countries where the dominant Christian denomination was tempted into using an apparent political advantage to leverage social ascendancy.
Ireland is the great example, with a similar process now playing out in Poland and Hungary.
Same on the Protestant side in Scotland and Sweden.
Orthodoxy in Romania, Bulgaria and Greece.
Turns out that people don’t like being lectured on morality by clerics who, rather predictably, tend to succumb to temptations venal or physical.
The Anglicans seem less inclined to fall into that trap, after repeated painful experiences in the 17th to 19th centuries.
It was not so long ago that the Catholic Church was almost as much a pillar of a secular/religous dyarchy in Ireland as the ulema in Arabia (though not so much as the mullahs in Iran).
And what has been the consequence?
30% of the population of Ireland are now “no religion”; 45% are “religion is not important” etc.
Even the (nominally?) Catholic majority are no longer prepared to accept effective clerical immunity regarding abuses, or the old pattern of state/church melding in social services.
In short: political power is a temptation and a trap for religious groups.
And in the US it appears to be even less about actual religion at all, as opposed to performative attempts to assert dominance over an opponent, and thus solidify group-cohesion support.
May well work in the short term, but in a modern society it’s probably not a good long-term strategy.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: A very fair point. The DOJ investigation into Santos, following the iron-bound rules of criminal prosecution (including the presumption of innocence), should be the ultimate test. Meanwhile, there is nothing stopping a Congressional ethics investigation.
In any case, my comment was a response to the cynicism of saying, “We won’t seek the expulsion of this alleged fraudster because we have a razor-thin margin in the House.”
@JohnSF:
When religion and politics go into a room together only one comes out alive and it’s usually politics since politics allows you to hurt people right now without waiting around for the rapture.
@JohnSF:
I’m currently doing The Great Courses sequence on “The Conservative Tradition”. I was fascinated to learn that making Anglicanism into weak tea was a deliberate choice by English conservatives such as Pitt the younger. It was important to them to have a state religion as a unifying and homogenizing force, but they recognized that a religion that either challenged or demanded would drive people away into dissent, or atheism. Better to keep it bland and comforting, if you’re going to impose it on everyone. After all, it’s not whether it’s true that matters, it’s whether it dampens radical inclinations.
@James Joyner: “Supreme Court Justices don’t need to get bills through a Democratic Senate or signed by a Democratic President, they simply need another four Justices to go along”
Uh, what does this mean?
@JohnSF: “most Anglican clerics aren’t gibbering loons.”
In her 60th year, my wife has decided to start going to church again, something she stopped after she left high school. She chose an Anglican church, and from what I’ve seen from the times she’s dragged me along for Evensong, it’s a pleasant, welcoming, positive environment with beautiful music sung in a spectacular setting. (https://www.saintthomaschurch.org/)
Never going to become a believer myself, but I do find that this church reflects so much of what there is to love and admire about Britain…
@JohnSF:
To understand the American Evangelicals, you must bear in mind Martin Luther King’s accurate observation. It’s about race, not religion. Makes understanding why they rally so strongly around a Trump so much easier. IMO the reason Trump was ever made POTUS was that Obama’s election was at least 2-3 generations before that segment of the US might’ve tolerated a black man as POTUS. Next thing you know we had 10’s of thousands of people protesting everything Obama did with tea-bags dangling from their hats, including the healthcare plan they actually liked. Trump is the embodiment of a reactionary movement based on something they are reluctant to be honest, even to themselves, about.